Signal lamps and colours

[bertiedog]

I am just about to outfit the new Woody bay line with signals, but found I had a few SME arms stored away that will suit the Southern types of rail made units the L&B used in later years.

 

They were made in the 1940's by the SME company, in Steyning, Sussex, the same makers of the HiFi pickup tone arms that they later produced. The engineering of the various parts is suburb, as with the tone arm.

 

SME stood for Scale Modelling Equipment LTD and it's founder, Mr Alastair Robertson-Aikman, made a large selection of precision brass parts for the model railway trade in the 1940's and early 1950's. They made a large range of signal parts, chimneys, buffers, whistles etc., and also made a motor, but I have never traced one of them. The company changed to Hi-Fi about 1956/7, dropping all of the railway products, which were sold off to Hamblings.

 

Now the SME signals used to have a tinted cellulose filter, that was liquid cellulose coloured varnish and dipped or dropped into each brass signal arm frame as required.

 

The red is obvious, but a lot of the surviving ones, now very delicate with age, have a green filter or a blue filter.

 

Is this to portray the use of blue with a yellow flamed oil lamp, to give a green light, making green as well indicates the grain of wheat bulbs are too white, so need green.

 

What did the Southern use in those days? blue or green. Obviously a yellow LED can shine through the blue to give green.

 

The Sayer Chaplin signal lamps used a red/ green varnish direct on the bulb, in the manner of old Christmas tree lights.

 

I can replace the deteriorated old varnish with thin coloured plastic film, hot moulded into place, but need to know the best correct colour to use.

 

Stephen

 

 

[Gwiwer]

 

 

Is this to portray the use of blue with a yellow flamed oil lamp, to give a green light

 

Without being familiar with the items in question I can make a more general comment that semaphore signal lenses were normally a very blue shade of green in order to show a green aspect when lamp-lit.  If one inspects current semaphores the same remains true so long as they remain lamp-lit and not LED.  The precise shade has eluded me when modifying current models though the Ratio kits which include separately-applied lenses, as opposed to those where you paint the lens colours on, have it about right.

[Alister_G]

I've recently put together some signal kits from MSE (Model Signal Engineering) which come supplied with acetate filters in red and blue to match the prototype:

 

 

I  used a 1.8mm yellow LED like this:

 

 

mounted on the lamp bracket, which shines bright yellow :

 

 

but if painted all over with matt black such that only the tip of the lens is left clear:

 

 

it gives a nice bright green:

 

 

and a decent red:

 

 

Al.

[bertiedog]

Exactly the LED type that qill fit the SME parts I have to hand, mainly the various arms. At some point SME appear to have made a vast range of parts for signals, all pre etching, stamped or turned parts, columns and finals of all types, The trays I have are the remains of a shop stock tray, not complete signals.

Some lamps are tubes and oversized to take GOW bulbs, the rest of the brass parts are dead scale.